Errol Morris Quotes

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

People believe what they want to believe.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant. One motto on the show is, 'Keep your facts, I'm going with the truth.'

We tend to believe our own propaganda a little too completely.

The greater your powers of self-delusion, the greater will be the apparent efficacy of this untruth.

I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.

Belief creates its own experience; therefore, such an experience is not true.

We say seeing is believing, but actually, we are much better at believing than at seeing. In fact, we are seeing what we believe all the time and occasionally seeing what we can't believe

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.

There is always a divergence between our perception and what actually exists.

We see what we want to see. We idealize each other with our own fantasies.

The blind see what they want to see.

The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.

What people believe prevails over the truth.

Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.

Our everyday, traditional ideas of reality are delusions which we spend substantial parts of our daily lives shoring up, even at the considerable risk of trying to force facts to fit our definition of reality instead of vice versa.

The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to trurh.

You see, if you make believe hard enough that something is true, then it is true for you.

We see what we want to believe.

People who confuse what they wish were true with what is really true create distorted pictures of reality that make it impossible for them to make the best choices.

People see what they want to see when they need to.

All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.